Now don't stop working your asses off to beat the Bush/Cheney
criminals when I tell you this. It's in the bag! Kerry's going to win
and win by a big margin. How do I know?

In about the sixth grade, I made my first bet on a sporting
event. This led to a long and checkered path culminating few years back
in my walking away from gambling after putting a hundred on the Cowboys
to go to the Super Bowl at twenty-eight to one. They won that year. I
kept the money and never made another bet. But that's another story.

Sonny Liston was the meanest, baddest, ass kickin'est
heavy weight champion since Joe Louis. His opponent was a smart mouthed
kid named Cassius Clay. Everyone in the boxing community wanted to see
Liston shut him up. The odds were very heavy that he would do the job.
Not only the oddsmakers but every sporting expert in the world said Clay
didn't have a chance and that he might even get killed after all the things
he said in the papers about Liston.

Nobody gave Clay a chance except a young nobody sports
writer named Howard Cosell. Cosell heard everyone saying, "Liston'll
kill'em" and "The kid don't stand a chance" but he never
heard anyone say why. Cosell measured Clay's reach (several inches longer
than Liston), Clay's stamina, his speed, his intelligence and his ring
skills. Cosell picked Clay and so did I. I got bets against every kid
on the football team. I put up twenty-five bucks which I earned mowing
lawns at three bucks a pop in the hideous Texas summer.

You know the rest. Liston never touched Clay. After
a couple of rounds everyone could see it was all over. I spent the money
on Chuck Berry records and a girl with braces and.....never mind. Clay
became the great hero of my youth.

You, all my fellow left wing tree huggers, are buying
into the Sonny Liston thing. Bush is ahead in the polls? Yeah, and I'm
Frank Sinatra.

We all look at the news and see the red states and blue
states and hear the pundits pund and pund and pund about how close the
race is and that the swift boat issue is hurting Kerry and the flip flop
thing is working and the GOP convention bounce was significant and blah
blah wooof woof.

Think Clay/Liston. Tell me one good reason anyone but
a Christian fundamentalist would vote for Bush? All I hear is that the
people in the Midwest and Pennsylvania and Florida are so different from
all my San Francisco and New York gang. Really? Those people are so
different? Then why did Gore get more votes than Bush the first time?

Think Clay/Liston and look at the facts.

The Log Cabin Republicans (over a million) are not going
to vote for Bush after his Constitutional Amendment bullshit over gay marriage.

How many women are going to fall for the same "compassionate
conservatism" after they have seen the Republican platform?

How many educators are going to fall for "no child
left behind"?

How many people with life threatening diseases see the
stem cell issue as a dealbreaker the same way some women see the choice
issue?

How many Nader voters from last election in swing states
are so stupid that they won't switch to Democrat this time?

How many African Americans in Florida are going to the
polls to make damn sure their votes are counted this time? Remember what
Sharpton said about the Black vote being won by the blood of "four
little girls in a church".

How many jobless don't believe a word anymore and want
change?

How many investment bankers and stock brokers see what's
really happening?

How many people in uniform are going to look at the Kerry
and Bush war records and say to themselves that at least Kerry went? I
am a Vietnam era Navy veteran and we all knew how rich people protected
their kids by getting them in the National Guard. Military folk still know
how the deal works.

Clay/Liston.

How many people believe Bush has run a good war?

In "The Art of War", Sun Tzu says to make your
enemy believe that you are strong where you are weak and weak where you
are strong. This is the only strategy that the Republicans and the media
have used and, unfortunately, we've all bought into it.

We like to think that, because we read the NY Times and
watch Charlie Rose instead of the Fort Worth Star Telegram and Rush Limbaugh
that we are getting the more even handed information. Well, suckers, the
Times has admitted to rolling over for the Bush administration and Charlie
Rose has been on his knees to the Coke Company and the Bloomburg Foundation
ever since Newt Gingrich successfully pulled what few teeth were left in
NPR's senile head. Close elections sell papers.

We've been duped so we would buy papers and stay depressed
and echo the same crap as the right but in softer terms. How many of you
lefties have actually used the words "flip flop" recently? Shame
on you. The media sold it to you and you bought it. Why not use the words
"willing to change"? Because you've been brain washed.

Same thing with the words "pro-abortion" and
"right to life". Why don't the news people say "pro-choice"
and "anti-choice"? And now which terms are you using?

So, keep up the good fight. If I were the only one whose
vote counted, I would have made Kucinch president. But, Kerry's wife is
a very heavy pro-environment person, and Kerry actually reads books and,
like my Nader friends, I know how much this election means.

But, don't worry your pretty little Commie Pinko Tree
Hugging heads, Bush is done. Next time someone tells you the election
is going to be a close one, ask them why. Meanwhile, bet the farm on Kerry.
Clay/Liston.